It’s Working As Intended

by N M Tatum

  “Three.”

  “Let me.”

  She walked to the corner of the shipping container. The Rapoo were huddled together just around the turn. She moved like a ghost, her feet not making a sound as they touched down. She pressed her back to the corner and looked up at Cody.

  He nodded.

  She led with her shield. The Rapoo had no time to react. She stabbed the first through the chest. He shrieked as she withdrew the blade and then it fell dead. The other two scrambled as if they had just been woken from a deep sleep. They tripped over the dead one.

  Sam drove the blade down through the second one’s back. She felt its spine snap as she severed it. The final Rapoo ran straight into the wall in its frantic fit. Dazed, it offered no resistance as Sam swung, slicing off its head.

  Four seconds and three dead Rapoo.

  Though pleased, something about the encounter did not sit well with Sam. “That seemed too easy.”

  “Let’s not,” Joel said, still perched on the catwalk. “Them dying easy is something to celebrate, not a cause for alarm.”

  “No, she’s got a point,” Cody said. “Past encounters with the Rapoo have shown they are vicious to the point of seeming rabid. Even after I fired that shot, those three stayed huddled together. Almost like…” A cold shiver ran up his spine. “Like they were afraid.”

  Joel’s sigh tickled the team’s ears. “Fuck.”

  Reggie slid the gatling off his back. “No reason to panic. Let’s just keep pressing forward.”

  Reggie, Sam, and Cody moved further through the maze. Sam handled the pests quietly when she could, not out of a need for stealth, but because she didn’t want to stand by and watch. If anything, the quiet only made the storehouse more unsettling.

  A specter seemed to be stalking about in the shadows now. A creature fearsome enough to leave Rapoo shivering in the corner. When the gatling was rattling off, all thought of ghosts faded away among the noise.

  They’d cleared half of the maze before encountering any real resistance. They ventured to the left, toward what they knew was a dead end. The heat signature was such a cluster that Cody couldn’t decipher how many individual creatures there were.

  The team was so far into the maze now that Joel had to move to the far end of the catwalk to provide cover. He’d be able to see just far enough to get them through the other side.

  Reggie and Cody approached the dead end together. As they got close, they dropped to their bellies and slid to the edge, hoping to get a peek at what was waiting for them before having to fight whatever it was.

  What they witnessed defied everything Cody thought he knew about the creatures. Huddled together were a dozen critters, both Rapoo and ShimVens. Not only were they not fighting, but they also looked to be using each other for warmth.

  “That sounds both oddly cute and horrifying at the same time,” Joel said as Cody described the scene.

  “This is definitely a new generation,” Cody said. “They’ve been modified quite a bit.”

  Sam whispered over comms. “Hey, I think I found one of those unknowns.”

  She stood ten meters away from the huddled mass of Rapoo and ShimVens. A wriggling thing was on the ground in front of her. She bent over to get a closer look. It looked somewhat like a giant slug and flopped about like a fish out of water, but it didn’t seem to be in distress.

  Gingerly, she poked the creature. The slick sound made her stomach turn. She poked it again, harder this time, to see how it would react. It emitted a quiet whine, like a baby pig. Her attention on the new creature, Sam didn’t notice the mass of Rapoo and ShimVens begin to move.

  “Doesn’t seem to be much to the thing,” Sam said.

  She nudged it again, even harder. The thing whined louder, sounding more distraught.

  The Rapoo and ShimVens stirred.

  Cody was the first to notice the connection, though too late.

  Sam raised her sword. “I’m killing it. We can figure out what it is later.”

  The huddled pack of Rapoo and ShimVens exploded like a landmine had just been stepped on. The creatures were frenzied. Half of them ran straight for Sam. The others were so rabid that they ran into the side of the shipping containers. However, once they’d regained their senses, they began to clamber up the sides.

  Sam barely got her shield up in time. The Rapoo slammed into it. Shockwaves of pain lanced through her arm. She dropped to one knee, lowering her center of gravity, and sent the Rapoo flying over her head. Which she immediately regretted—she was now pinned between that beast and the rest.

  Reggie opened fire on the rabid pack. They scattered so fast, his tight burst of gatling fire proved useless. The dead-end stretch of the maze was a shooting gallery, but, unfortunately, Sam was caught inside. He slid the gatling to his back.

  Cody pumped scatterblast after scatterblast at the creatures, not killing them and barely keeping them from climbing out of the maze. One of the ShimVens slipped through the attack and charged Cody’s flank. Its head popped. Cody never heard the shot.

  “One ShimPoo down,” Joel said in his ear.

  “ShimPoo?” Cody said.

  “Just saving time.” Another ShimVen exploded as a sniper shot tore through its side. “I like to be efficient.”

  Reggie stood at the edge of the container. He pounded his gloves together. “Hold your fire.”

  When the shooting stopped, the ShimVens and Rapoo pulled back together, amassing their strength. Reggie jumped. He raised both hands over his head, clenching them together in one powerful fist, and drove it down into the floor as he landed. The shockwave slammed the creatures into the containers so hard, they rocked under Cody’s feet.

  Sam braced with her shield. The shockwave hit it and knocked her off her feet. She rolled backward and used her momentum to get upright. Then she lunged at the Rapoo behind her, slicing open its midsection.

  Reggie followed up his powerful strike with a flurry of punches. He turned two ShimVens into paste by punching one into the other and sandwiching them against the shipping container. Intent on keeping the advantage, he swung at them as fast as he could, not allowing any of the creatures to recuperate.

  Sam joined Reggie, and, within half a minute, they had dispatched the frenzied pack.

  Joel leapt over the catwalk railing onto the top of the closest container and ran to join them. Cody scanned the area, making sure there wasn’t another attack incoming.

  Sam kicked the bodies aside, looking underneath them. “It has to be here somewhere. That slug-looking thing.”

  Once Joel arrived, Cody tasked him with keeping watch up top, and then jumped down into the maze. He walked past Sam. “You saw it over here?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Couldn’t have gone far. The thing didn’t look very mobile.”

  “You didn’t kill it?” Cody said.

  “No, didn’t get the chance. As soon as I raised my sword to it, the others lost their shit.”

  As Cody thought, a hypothesis began to coalesce in his mind, but he needed more data before it could fully form. He studied the infrared scans again. He spotted several more ShimPoo clusters, but it was what he didn’t see that concerned him.

  “All of the shipping containers are reading cold,” he reported.

  “Shouldn’t they be?” Joel said. “They take the cargo out of the containers. That’s the point.”

  “Not at a storehouse,” Cody said. “The point is to keep the cargo in the containers. The Rapoo and ShimVens—”

  “ShimPoo,” Joel said.

  “I’m not saying that,” Cody said. “They got out of their containers somehow. The only way they could have is if they were let out. And they’re only out here in the main area of the storehouse… The decontamination room is clear.” He paced the room, head low, scratching at the back of his neck.

  After a minute of silence, Reggie said, “What are you thinking?”

  Cody continued pacing. “The containers came in, then were scanned, found
to be clear, and moved into this storage area. The crew must have opened some to check their contents. Once it was apparent the storehouse was infested, they evacuated and locked the place down.” He stopped pacing. “The shipping containers are shielded.”

  Cody stepped over the mess of dead creatures to get to what they thought was a dead end. Using the light of his wristcom, he saw that the shipping container that formed the end of the alley was open, though only a crack. He yanked on the door, which opened with a squeal.

  “Reggie’s shockwave must have shut the door a little,” he mused. “Those Rapoo and ShimVens came out of here.” The prevalence of shit in the container made that fact clear. Cody moved through the container, examining the crates inside. “Layton Corp crates.”

  Fire blazed in his chest, further validation that his theory was not crazy. The Layton crates had been, unsurprisingly, broken from the inside, as evidenced by claw marks and splinters of wood lying outside them.

  They were all empty. Except for the one in the back.

  “Sam,” Cody called. “Come here for a sec?”

  She trudged through the ShimPoo paste to the back of the shipping container.

  Cody pointed inside the smaller crate. “Is that the slug-looking thing you saw?”

  The bottom of the crate seemed to move in the dark, like a pulsating, living thing. Cody illuminated it with his wristcom. The bottom was covered with dozens of the slugs. They flopped like suffocating fish, making wet, slapping sounds.

  Sam nodded. “That’s it. What the hell is it?”

  Cody shrugged. “No idea. I’ll see what I can dig up. At first glance, they kind of resemble angelfish. But, obviously, they aren’t. They can’t live outside of water.” Before leaving the container, he scanned the walls and ceiling, gathering data on the shielding material. The team gathered around. “Something is very weird here.”

  “Statement of the obvious,” Joel said. “But do continue.”

  “First, the containers are shielded,” Cody said. “We didn’t encounter that at any of the other infestation sights. Meaning whoever sent the infested crates here knew they would scan them. And this is supposedly a secret facility.” He let that sink in.

  “Second, the bizarre behavior from the ShimVens and Rapoo.”

  “Shimpoo. They went bat-shit crazy,” Joel said. “Seems perfectly normal to me.”

  “Only when Sam tried to kill that slug thing. Before that, they were sleeping on top of each other like a pile of puppies.”

  “Don’t ruin puppies for me,” Joel said.

  Cody leaned against a shipping container and brought up the display of his wristcom. “When the slug got agitated, the ShimVens and Rapoo got agitated. When the slug’s life was threatened, they went berserk.”

  Reggie had climbed back on top of the shipping container with Joel’s help. He sat with his legs hanging over the side and was wiping the blood off his gloves. “Wait, you mean they were protecting the slug things?”

  “I think so,” Cody said. “I think this batch of ShimVens and Rapoo were genetically modified to act as guardians for the slug things. You know, like how farmers will put a llama in the pen with the sheep?”

  Joel shrugged. “No, I don’t know that. Why do you say that like it’s common knowledge?”

  Cody typed into a search window on his wristcom display. “The llama is a fierce protector of its young. If one is in with a flock of sheep, it protects them from predators.”

  Reggie finally saw the fabric of his gloves beneath the thick coat of blood. “So these ShimPoo are llamas.”

  Cody sighed.

  Joel smiled. “It’s catching on.”

  “But why are they protecting the slugs?” Sam said. “If the point is to destroy the facility, then why have the ShimPoo act as babysitters to some snot balls that just flop around?”

  Cody considered the question as he paced the length of the dead-end corridor. Why waste resources? Why smuggle in the ShimVens and Rapoo just to have them sleep at the bedside of these useless creatures? Unless they aren’t useless.

  They must have served a purpose. All of the attacks so far were deliberate and precise. And, most of all, effective. The Notches eventually eliminated the infestations, but not before the targeted facilities were crippled. Whoever the mastermind behind them was, he or she would not act without purpose.

  Before he could venture any further down his hypothetical road, something decided to join him on his walk. Out of the shipping container slithered a handful of the slug-like creatures. They moved faster than he would have thought, sliding across the ground more like snakes than slugs. They were more agile than he’d assumed. A few more slithered out after them, and soon, there were a dozen.

  “This is why the ShimVens and Rapoo were sent to guard them,” Cody said. “To keep them safe until they matured. They aren’t done growing yet.”

  The slug in the front stopped a few meters from Cody. It sat up like an inchworm, balancing unsteadily on its backside. The front of it, what must be its face, pulled in opposite directions until it began to open up. It split, creating a mouth. The creature squeaked. It sounded like a mouse, an adorable little sound.

  Then Cody saw its teeth.

  Chapter Twelve

  The creatures morphed from harmless little blobs into vicious snakes in half a heartbeat. They stopped flopping about like air-starved fish and began slithering on their bellies. Their heads, which looked like nothing more than slimy thumbs with a light, suddenly opened up into mouths full of needle-like teeth. What had been a negligible presence moments before now became the Notches’ greatest threat.

  “Move!” Cody yelled.

  The little slug in front of him had drawn the team’s attention, but there was a crate of the creatures in the container behind Sam.

  She rolled forward over one shoulder so that when she came back to her feet, she was facing the container, her shield raised just in time to block two of the creatures that shot at her like slimy missiles. They hit the shield with a splat then fell to the floor and wriggled until they turned onto their bellies.

  They were surprising and clearly dangerous, but they sliced in half just fine. Sam dispatched the two without much problem.

  Reggie jumped down to join her. He drove his fist down into one, but the creature was so slimy and squishy that it shot out from under his knuckles. He tried again with the same result.

  Joel couldn’t get a clean shot at the things. They were too small and squirmed too much. He was more likely to hit the other Notches if he started shooting, so he pulled out his dagger and jumped into the fray. He pinned one down, but he knew that the second he withdrew his dagger from it and the floor, the slug would slither away.

  He stomped on it instead. However, the amount of effort it took to stomp the thing to death left him nearly exhausted. It was like trying to pop a half-empty water balloon with your foot.

  Cody followed Joel’s lead, opting for his dagger instead of the scatterblaster. The whole affair looked like a demented square dance. The Notches jumped up and down, flailing their arms and stomping their feet, quickly becoming drenched in sweat.

  Joel caught one just right, his heel coming down on the slug at such an angle that it shot out from under him straight into Reggie’s face, and Joel landed flat on his back. The wet slap as it struck Reggie made Joel crack into laughter, but the impact of his fall had forced the air out of his lungs, and the intense laughter almost made him pass out.

  Maybe it was the lack of oxygen that brought Joel some clarity.

  “Fire,” he said with a wheeze.

  That was all it took. Reggie knew what to do. He peeled the slug off his face and slapped it against the shipping container. He grabbed Joel by the forearm and dragged him past Sam and Cody. As he slid across the floor, Joel plucked a flame grenade off his belt and threw it at the mass of wriggling slugs.

  It popped with a flash, and the dead-end filled with flames. When the flames died down, half of the slugs were d
ead. The other half were only half dead. They wriggled pathetically, trying to crawl back into the container. The heat had dried them out, though. They’d lost their elasticity. So when Reggie drove his fist down into one, it burst and left a smear on the concrete floor.

  Cody and Sam joined in stomping the rest to mush.

  With the area clear, the Notches sat and took the chance to rest and consider the data they’d just gathered.

  “So, we know why the ShimPoo were turned into llamas,” Joel said. He rubbed his eyes. “That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever said.”

  He may have been physically exhausted, but Cody’s mind raced with the implications of everything that had just happened. “They were protecting the slugs until they matured. If Layton is willing to go through the effort of genetically modifying the ShimVens and Rapoo, and then just dispatch them as guard dogs, that means these slug things are even more dangerous.”

  He returned to his wristcom to see what other information he could dig up.

  “At least we know how to kill them now,” Reggie said. “We just need to cook them a little bit.”

  “But can we find them before they fully turn into whatever they’re supposed to be?”

  Cody didn’t realize Sam’s question was directed at him. The silence eventually informed him of such.

  “What? Oh, yeah, we can. I scanned the material lining the shipping crate. I can adjust the storehouse’s sensors to detect which containers are lined with it, which should point us to the ones holding the slugs.”

  The others seemed to accept that as the next step. Well, the next step after they rested.

  Silence fell over them. Sam kept a keen ear. Knowing that there were ShimVens, Rapoo and these new things in the room, waiting, growing into more efficient and ruthless killing machines, did not sit well with her.

  But the only thing she heard was the rhythmic tapping of Cody’s fingers on the keys of his wristcom.

  After a minute of that, Cody said, “Lophius.”

  “Excuse you,” Joel said.

  “That’s what these new slug things are called,” Cody said. “Lophius. They’re mentioned in a really obscure journal about genetic engineering. They’re created by manipulating the DNA of angelfish. At least, that was the plan. The paper was just talking in hypotheticals at that point.”